When recreational marijuana use was legalized in California, it presented an opportunity to reduce or expunge convictions for possession crimes that made it harder for some people to get ahead in life.

Since then, some counties have worked to address those convictions, taking on the lengthy bureaucratic process so that people would not have to wade through the legal world on their own.

San Francisco led the charge, announcing in January that the district attorney’s office would retroactively apply the new marijuana law to prior convictions dating as far back as 1975. But for prosecutors, the chance to change those convictions also came with a challenge: It required a lot of resources to plow through thousands of cases.

On Tuesday, Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced what he believes to be the solution. San Francisco is working with a nonprofit organization to create a program that would automatically clear eligible convictions under California’s new marijuana legalization law.

The program, created by Code for America, will allow the district attorney’s office to use new technology to determine eligibility for record clearance under state law, automatically fill out the required forms and generate a completed motion in PDF format. The district attorney’s office can then file the completed motion with the court.

Under Proposition 64, nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions in San Francisco will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to the proposition’s passage will be dismissed and sealed, the district attorney’s office said.

More in Crime & Courts

Gangs were likely involved in the string of arson attacks, police said, and they come amid mounting concerns in Sweden about gang-related violence. More than 40 people were shot and killed in the Nordic country last year, and the prime minister said in January that he was not ruling out a military response to gang activity.

A rooftop camera recorded the silver Ford Fiesta driving past Parliament and suddenly veering sharply to the left, striking cyclists waiting at a set of lights, then crossing the road and crashing into a barrier outside Parliament. Armed police surrounded the car within seconds, pulling a man from the vehicle. Police said the driver was alone and no weapons were...

Authorities in Nebraska on Tuesday morning used the powerful opioid fentanyl to carry out a death sentence, an unprecedented move that came as the state - which just three years ago briefly abolished capital punishment - completed a remarkable reversal and resumed executions for the first time in nearly a generation.